Five Unlikely People Who Might Have Killed JFK

We all know the story: On November 22, 1963, John F. Kennedy – the 35th President of the United States- was killed while riding in his motorcade in Dallas, Texas. The Warren Commission, led by Chief Justice Earl Warren, concluded that Kennedy’s assassination was committed by a single gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald. Controversy and conspiracy have followed their findings to this day. Rumors abound that there was a second gunman on what became known as the grassy knoll. Witnesses to the day’s events died mysteriously in the following years and still others hinted that they knew of people involved. Below is a list of five potential conspirators in JFK’s assassination. Some of these claims are really stretching. Some are credible. What are your own thoughts?

THE LIMO DRIVER

This theory has been around the internet for some time now. According to this conspiracy, Secret Agent William Greer, Kennedy’s limousine driver was the one that dealt the death blow. If you watch close-ups of the Zapruder film, you do actually see Greer turn his head to the side, right before the fatal shot is taken. Jackie Kennedy was looking at her husband at this time and would not have seen Greer. However, Mrs. Connally, would have been inches away from a pistol going off and would have known that Greer had fired the weapon. While I do not believe that Greer shot Kennedy, his mistake of not speeding up the car is what may have made the last shot a mortal one. He looked behind and did not try to get away. During the Warren Commission testimony, it was told that Greer was not a highly trained secret service agent. His lack of discipline is what caused him to falter.

JACKIE ONASSIS

Settle down and just read it. Possibly the most preposterous of the conspiracy theories, there are several reasons people give that may implicate Jackie O. There is clearly white smoke in the Zapruder film and others at the point of impact that indicate a gun barrel releasing a bullet from JFK’s left side. Bullets don’t create white smoke. Guns do. In the films, Jackie’s arms don’t hug her husband. They are sort of askew when the first bullet hits him. At this time, she is seemingly paying closer attention to Governor Connally than she is to her injured husband. Finally, it looks like she is hiding something – possibly the gun – in frames #326 and #327 of the Zapruder film. If Jackie was the murderer, why did she do it? What were her motivations? JFK cheated on her with many different women. Could this have been her motive?

LEE HARVEY OSWALD2

No, you aren’t seeing double. One belief is that Lee Harvey Oswald had an impersonator who was involved in the killing. This is actually a credible story because it is written in the notes of FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover. This theory has been outlined in the 1966 book, “The Second Oswald” by Professor Richard H. Popkins. This book was based upon eyewitness accounts. Additionally, according to the House Select Committee on Assassinations (yes, there is such a thing), there is proof that there was an Oswald impersonator at the time and there are pictures of both Oswalds together and handwriting examples. This “Other Oswald” was supposedly part of a government operation that had no connection with the assassination.

LYNDON B. JOHNSON

The 36th President of the United States has been implicated as a possible member of the conspiracy theory to kill JFK. A 2003 book, entitled “Blood, Money, and Power: How LBJ Killed JFK”, by Barr McClellan, suggests that Johnson may have been motivated by the fear that JFK wasn’t going to have him as a running mate in the next election and was onto some of his under-handed dealings while being vice president. According to this account, LBJ, along with his friend, Attorney Edward Clark, masterminded the assassination and had it paid for by oil magnates, H.L. Hunt and Clint Murchison. Rumor also has a smudged fingerprint of Johnson’s crony, Malcolm “Mac” Wallace at the sniper’s nest at Dealey Plaza. E. Howard Hunt, former CIA and Watergate figure, is another possible suspect in the Kennedy assassination. Hunt penned an autobiography in 2007 that implicated Johnson as the mastermind behind the plot along with several CIA agents. Finally, this theory was also told by Madeline D. Brown, LBJ’s former mistress who said Johnson had been planning the murder with H.L. Hunt as early as 1960.

WOODY HARRELSON’S DAD

Nearly a dozen people were taken into custody in and around Dealey Plaza in the minutes following the assassination. In most of these instances, no records of the identities of those detained were kept. The most famous of those taken into custody have come to be known as the “tramps,” three men discovered in a boxcar in the rail yard west of the grassy knoll. Speculation regarding the identities of the three and their possible involvement in the assassination became widespread in the ensuing years. Photographs of the three at their time of arrest fueled this speculation, as the three “tramps” appeared to be well-dressed and clean-shaven, seemingly unlikely for hobos riding the rails. Some researchers also thought it suspicious that the Dallas police had quickly released the tramps from custody apparently without investigating whether they might have witnessed anything significant related to the assassination, and by the fact that Dallas police claimed to have lost the records of their arrests as well as their mugshots and fingerprints.

Charles Harrelson, the father of actor Woody Harrelson, has been alleged to be the tallest of the three tramps in the photographs. Harrelson at various times before his death boasted about his role as one of the tramps. In their book, “The Man on the Grassy Knoll”, John R. Craig and Philip A. Rogers claimed that Harrelson and Charles Rogers were the two gunman behind the picket fence on the Grassy Knoll. Harrelson, a freelance hitman and convicted murderer of US District Judge John H. Wood, Jr. is mentioned in the novel, “No Country for Old Men” (which his son, Woody plays a bounty hunter). Harrelson also alluded to being a part of the Kennedy assassination at his trial, but denied it later. He was found dead in his cell in a maximum security prison in 2007.